12 year old severely injured in fall from Wisconsin Dells bungee ride

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

12-year-old hurt on ride


A twelve year old girl fell 40 feet to the pavement when the safety net failed to stop her free fall from a 150 foot drop at Extreme World in Wisconsin Dells.

In a separate article. Extreme World is being foreclosed.
Also foreclosed in Wisconsin Dells are chicago Club, Sharkey's Bar, and Cambrian Lodge (previously planned as a timeshare development).

Despite the foreclosures, the Dells has been extremely busy and a ride downtown faces long traffic delays.

[shaggy Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close shaggy]

What a horror story. OMG. The poor girl and her parents. My heart goes out to them. shaggy

[Keitht Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Keitht]

Regrettably there will always be instances where safety checks aren't all they should be (I don't know whether that is the case here or not). There have been a couple of cases reported in the UK press in the past few days of incidents in areas popular with UK holidaymakers. In one a father and daughter were doing a tandem parascend when the father's harness snapped and he fell to his death. In another a 9 year old girl was white water rafting without her parents when she was thrown out and drowned.

[brucecz Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close brucecz]

We were up at Christmas Mountain from July 29 to July 31 and did not hear anything about it.


Bruce

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

I happened Friday afternoon, was on the news, July 30.
I have heard the girl died.

[brucecz Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close brucecz]

How sad.

Bruce

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

Ron said that this morning the report was still critically injured. Can't find anything on line. waitress and someone else said yesterday she died, but that may be false.

an article on line reported a witness performed cpr, but said it was too late and blood was pouring everywhere. The family was from Florida, last name Marti.
Extreme World is due to go on sheriff's sale for foreclosure Sept 8.

What is really hard to undertand is she was not the first person on the ride, so why did the net fail for her and not others?

[bnoble Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close bnoble]

There are a couple of different possibilities.

The net isn't in just one place. When a rider drops, the net has to be lowered so that the rider can walk out. The net is then raised for the next rider. There is a signal to indicate when the net is high enough for the rider to be released. It is possible that the operator released the rider too early before the signal lit, or that the sensor malfunctioned.

[vacation_family99 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close vacation_family99]

Here's an article that talks about the net not being in place correctly before she began her descent:
Empoyee error caused fall at Extreme World

How very sad...

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

Yes, they reported operator error last night on the news. the girl is still in critical condition.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

The girls father appeared on the news yesterday. He is a physician. He said she saw the ride ont he travel channel and wanted to go for months. they could see the attraction from their lodging. She is now in stable condition, but can only move her right hand and communicates by blinking. He is anxious for her to start rehabilitation, but there will be paralysis. He said he signed a consent to have her dropped into a safety net. The operator released the girl while the net was on the ground. She fell directly to the ground. The father said he thought she was dead.

[riverdees05 Platinum Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close riverdees05]

Terrible

[Hobbitess Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Hobbitess]

I think it's a double tragedy. If the newspaper account I read is correct, there was a kind of pod that released the rider and a net below; both of them had to be raised for the ride to be safe. There should have been a mechanical device the ensured the pod would not drop the rider until both were high enough, but the newspaper only mentions that the possibility of confused hand signals as a cause. The person who released the rider too soon is going to have to live with that fact for life; whoever designed the thing and whoever okayed it without the obvious and simply safety device should share in that blame.

I hope and pray the little girl recovers more completely than the doctors expect and that everyone involved (including witnesses) can move on without permanent trauma.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

the worker was 33 years old and had worked there ten years.
Nothing on the news since the father's press conference.

[rapmarks Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close rapmarks]

they hae charged the operator of the ride with a felony.